A community forum on a proposed toxic waste dump in East Chicago will
be part of a Lectures in Race and Ethnicity Series at Indiana University
Northwest on Thursday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m. in Raintree Hall. The New
Face of Civil Rights: Battling Against Environmental Racismin Northwest
Indiana will offer a public forum in the discussion of the dump. The
topic of environmental justice and its political and global implications,
as well as its relation to civil rights, will also be addressed by Dr.
Raoul Contreras, IU Northwest associate professor of Latino Studies, and
Jose Bustos, director of the Cesar Chavez Catholic Worker House in East
Chicago.

Bustos, who is also the spokesperson for Citizens Against the Toxic
Waste Dump, says the proposed toxic waste dump may be built less than 800
yards from two schools in East Chicago.

"This unholy concoction of hazardous waste includes chromium, benzene,
toluene, naphthalene, copper, iron, lead, PCB's and more, all of which
will be stored near where our children spend most of our day," says Bustos,
adding that the dump "will be the biggest waste dump in the nation, and
the only one of its size near a school."

Sponsored by IU Northwest's department of minority studies, the Lectures
in Race and EthnicitySeries was designed to provide an open
community forum to inform all citizens of Northwest Indiana about the ongoing
struggle for environmental justice. For more information on The Face
of Civil Rights: Battling Against Environmental Racism in Northwest Indiana
contact Dr. Contreras at 219-980-6665.